The House of the Falcon

by Harold Lamb

  "No, Edith. I have never tried to see the hadji of the mosque." Donovan did not want to explain that, in her present situation, any attempt to get the girl out of Yakka Arik must fail; and he knew that she would not understand the impossibility of checking the feud of the Sayaks against the man he had called the Vulture.

  In the annals of the Moslem tribes of Central Asia there is a wrong that calls for vengeance, calls for what is termed in their own language the "pursuit of blood." It is a wrong that is handed down from father to son, and to grandson; a wrong that stains the honor of a man—and they hold personal honor very high—until it is wiped out.

  And Donovan, in making good the task that had brought him from India, had paid a price. He had given his pledge to the Sayaks to aid them in striking down the Vulture and his mates. This had kept him an outcast for the last years and once, at Kashgar, had nearly resulted in his death.

  Thus Donovan had widened the slight breach between him and the girl, without knowing it. How was he to understand her swift impulses and her yearning to be trusted?

  Perhaps if she had not loved John Donovan she would not have sacrificed him and herself to the anger of the Sayaks.

  CHAPTER XIX

  NEW ARRIVALS

  The day after their talk, as soon as John Donovan had left the stone chamber—Edith was careful to ascertain this by intensive listening behind her silk partition—the girl hurried through her breakfast.

  Then, moved by a long-considered impulse, she rifled the forbidden box of its telescope. Putting on her yashmak and concealing the fruit of her theft under her cloak, she tripped out of the house, through the courtyard and garden and up the slope that led to the pine forest.

  Edith ascended the mountain side steadily until she reached the shadow of the great trees. Here she pushed forward between rocks and thorn patches to an open grove. Then she surveyed the trees with a speculative frown. They veiled her view of the valley.

  Lack of resourcefulness was not one of her failings. She selected a sizable hemlock, with branches conveniently low to the ground, tucked her skirt more firmly about her waist, and began to climb.

  The sticky surface of the hemlock stained her fingers, and the loose needles fell into her hair. She kept on until she reached a larger branch, where, through an opening in the trees, a clear view down the valley was afforded.

  Edith breathed a sigh of satisfaction, and began to adjust the telescope. A ray of sunlight flashed on the lens. This flicker of light from the branches of the hemlock caught the eye of a man who lay hidden in the tamarisk clumps a short way up the mountain side.

  He was a broad, squat fellow in dirty woolen garb, a long musket slung over his shoulder. From the shelter of the tamarisks he was keeping a keen watch over the valley. The man had seen a movement in the hemlock, but had attributed it to the flutter of birds. Now, however, he pushed his gun further behind his back and began to crawl quietly downward, passing from thorn patch to tamarisk clump and gliding across the stretches of open grass.

  The watcher had not far to go. He moved with the stealth of one whose fear of observation had ascendancy over his desire to spy. A heavy-footed, evil-faced native, evidently a Sart, and a Sart upon a mission.

  Owing to her interest in the panorama of the valley, Edith did not notice him. The telescope was powerful, and she could discern plainly the details of the hidden mosque. Its doors were closed at this early hour; but she could see the crimson and blue coloring of the gate arch, and certain robed figures moving on the balcony over the arch.

  From this she turned the instrument down the lower valley. The gorge was revealed to her, and she drew an excited breath at seeing the gray tower perched on the cliff, rising over the steaming vapor that welled from the hot springs in the stream winding down the ravine bottom.

  The square, barren tower appeared as desolate as ever, at first. The girl, however, had strong, young eyes and the telescope brought the scene on the cliff summit close before her vision, even at the distance of some three miles.

  So she saw the small dots that came into view around the foot of the tower. By gazing intently, she glimpsed horses and men. It was impossible to make out the clothing of the men, yet Edith fancied that they did not resemble those she had seen in Yakka Arik.

  While the girl gazed, the Sart gained a vantage point where he could see the hemlock. Straightway, after he had stared long at Edith, he fell to scrutinizing the neighboring forest as if to make certain she was alone.

  Unconscious of another presence, Edith felt the surge of rising excitement. Her sally to the mountain side had been inspired by the hope of inspecting the mosque and its entrances without being seen by the Sayaks.

  The sight of men at the tower stirred her pulse. Instinct told her they were not men of the valley. Had her father sent a search party as far as the gorge? Was rescue at hand?

  Europeans were at Kashgar—Donovan had admitted as much. Could not a party from Srinagar, perhaps under Fraser-Carnie, have heard of the affray in the alley, and have traced her from Kashgar to the mountain wilds?

  Edith could have clapped her hands with delight. Instead she became suddenly quiet, with a little sigh of suspense.

  Up the slope under the pines Iskander and Mahmoud were walking. By the alert air of the manaps the girl guessed that they had seen her departure from the village and followed. Iskander moved silently through the brush in his soft, morocco boots, holding up the folds of his burnoose. Mahmoud followed idly as if uninterested in the proceeding.

  Whereupon Edith giggled irresistibly and nestled closer to her branch. It was not likely that they would see her in her perch. She felt the pleasant thrill of a fugitive, safe from pursuers, who watches the course of the pursuit.

  The two Sayaks moved nearer, evidently at loss where to seek for her. Iskander muttered something angrily under his breath and halted beneath the very tree in which she sat. Mahmoud followed more leisurely.

  Edith's bright eyes surveyed the scene with satisfaction. Then her hand flew to her throat as she stifled cry.

  Not a hundred yards away from the hemlock, and apparently nearer because of her elevated position, she had seen the Sart. He lay prone behind a low screen of ferns, and his long musket was trained upon Iskander.

  There was no mistaking the intent poise of the flattened body, the purpose in the head pressed close to the gunstock. The ferns must conceal the native from the keen glance of the Arab.

  Iskander moved slightly, to draw a cigarette from the packet he carried in his girdle. At this, the man behind the ferns looked up, only to settle down to his sight again. A brown hand closed upon the trigger guard.

  "Iskander!" she cried—almost screamed—"Look out, in front of you!"

  Startling as the girl's voice, coming from directly overhead, must have been, the quick-witted Arab did not look up. He slipped behind the bole of the tree while Edith was still speaking. There he drew a long, first puff at his cigarette and exchanged a low warning with Mahmoud—the hakim being still unseen by the slayer behind the thicket. Not even then did Iskander, experienced in the vicissitudes of mountain warfare, raise his eyes from the surrounding forest.

  "How many men, Mees Rand?" he asked quickly. "And where?"

  "One, that I can see," breathed the girl. "Behind the ferns under the tamarisks. He was going to shoot you with a rifle."

  "Good. Is he a white man or a native?"

  For a fleeting instant Edith's newly cherished hope flashed at this mention of the nearness of possible rescuers. Then she reflected that a follower of Major Fraser-Carnie or her father would hardly act in the manner of the skulker behind the ferns.

  At her answer, Iskander spoke briefly with Mahmoud.

  "It was the will of Allah that I should not have my revolver this morning," he remarked indifferently to the apprehensive girl. "But watch! You will see an unbeliever taste his own fear."

  He remained where he was. Mahmoud advanced swiftly from the underbrush, his slits of eyes flickering o
ver the ferns in front of him. He seemed to have no fear. Edith glanced at the slayer, who by now had seen Mahmoud. His broad, ugly face changed. His mouth opened and he gaped as if in the fascination of utter dread. The girl noticed that his hands trembled.

  Then, with an animal-like grunt, the Sart sprang up and ran plunging through the thickets up the mountainside.

  Iskander smiled and placed his hand to his lips.

  "Sayak!" he called, in a long, high note that carried far. "Sayak! Zikr!"

  As if an echo, a wailing cry answered from the tipper forest. Another took up the word, more distant. Still another voice repeated faintly from a far-off height.

  "Sayak!"

  "You see." Iskander shrugged his shoulders. "Why should I bleed a dog that flees, when there are those whose task it is? Presently you will hear the death of the dog. Ah!"

  He had noticed the telescope. Straightway he swung himself up into the branches, climbing swiftly, for all his loose robe. Edith waited, feeling like a criminal caught red-handed. She wished ardently for John Donovan, but the white man was below in the village.

  The Arab swung himself beside her on the branch and took the telescope. Evidently he was familiar with such things. For some time, while the girl observed him and Mahmoud squatted patiently beneath them, Iskander swept the valley. When the tower came within his vision, his dark face tensed. His lips bore a slight smile as he turned to the girl, who was still nervous—an after-effect of the scene just enacted under the pines.

  "Ohé, my little winged bird," murmured the Arab. "What do you think of those—riders upon the cliff, where you see the tower?"

  Edith fancied that he was trying to sound her, to learn what she had seen.

  With a snap Iskander closed the telescope and thrust it into his girdle, drawing at the cigarette he had not ceased to smoke.

  "A score of years ago to that tower came the beastlike Russians, stupid and without right to the lands. They were strong men, but lustful and very greedy. They put up a flag and made a speech about a boundary. Because of the cold, they stayed close to the Kurgan—all but one."

  He nodded reflectively.

  "All but one. He was like a vulture, and this Vulture and his native allies alone knew of Yakka Arik. They came to our valley—once. They took many of our women who were bathing in the women's pools in the shadow of the mosque. They took my daughter and her mother."

  Iskander let the cigarette fall from his fingers. He spoke calmly, but Edith saw the glow in his deep eyes and the veins that pulsed in his temples.

  "Yess. It was the Vulture, Mees Rand. When the Sayaks came to the Kurgan and asked for their thirty-nine women that had been taken away, the Russian commandant said he knew nothing of the matter. He said that the Alamans and Turkish followers had taken them.

  "An Englishman who was hunting mountain sheep—although I think he was never seen to shoot very many—had pitched his tent not far from the Kurgan and to him I carried our grievance. He said very little, but he talked with the Russian commandant and after that there was much confusion and sending of messages from the Kurgan. And presently the commandant and his men went away from the tower, journeying back out of our sight. The Englishman was Dono-van Khan and although his words were very mild, the Russians feared that he could call upon thousands of sword points from the British in India."

  The girl listened eagerly, gleaning for the first time an insight into the character of the adventurer.

  "And so," explained Iskander, "we called him khan. Afterward, he became the friend of Yakka Arik. Yet he would not admit that he was a soldier, like the Vulture. Nay, but—Dono-van Khan knows the name of the man who is the Vulture, and he alone can tell me the name of my enemy. Soon Dono-van Khan will tell it to me.

  "Aie! My daughter had seen fourteen summers. Her eyes were like twin moons and the scent of her hair was like the jasmine flower. Her teeth were white pearls. I did not see her again. It was told to me that her mother was sold in the Yarkand bazaar. But when I traced her to Khotan and the slave house of a merchant, she had died. But I have not forgotten the Vulture. Come, Mees Rand, I will help you."

  He assisted her to the ground. Mahmoud rose and stalked down toward the village. Edith glanced at Iskander pityingly and curiously. Then she uttered a stifled cry.

  Gunshots had sounded from the mountain overhead. Two quick reports were followed by another. Mahmoud looked up and smiled.

  "The dog is dead," said Iskander, with the assurance of one who knew he was voicing the truth. "Come!"

  He strode along restlessly, a gnawing fever in his eyes. Edith had to run to keep up, and a slipper fell from her foot. Iskander noticed it.

  "Why," she asked, "did that—that man run when he saw Mahmoud ? The hakim was unarmed——"

  "Fear is sharper than a sword. The dog looked upon the face of him who is master of the caravan, and feared lest he be sent away——"

  Iskander broke off. Edith remembered that she had heard him use that phrase before. What did it mean—to be sent away? She did not know. But there was no mistaking the dread in the Sart's face. The man had feared something, and very greatly.

  CHAPTER XX

  IN THE SHADOW OF THE TEMPLE

  That day was the one Edith finished her sewing. The new garment was complete. Alone in the stone room, safe behind the canopy, the girl surveyed it with brightened eyes. She held in her hand a complete Sayak dress, modeled after those brought by Aravang at her request.

  This was the task that had kept her busy. Donovan, with a man's ignorance of such matters, had not noticed the character of the garment. Now, making sure that she was unwatched, Edith slipped out of her old dress into the new.

  Putting on a heavy yashmak and placing another veil across her tawny hair, the girl surveyed herself in the mirror. To all intents, except for her gray eyes, she appeared one of the women of Yakka Arik. To add to the effect, she touched eyebrows and eyelids with kohl, likewise obtained from the obedient Aravang. She still wore the slippers instead of her shoes. The long, black outer garment, which covered the thin shirt and Oriental trousers, fell to her feet and concealed her much-darned silk stockings.

  Edith draped several pretty necklaces—gifts from Donovan—about her throat and felt that her masquerade was complete. Then she tiptoed to the door. The hall was silent, and she saw that the outer court with its tiny garden was empty. The Sayaks were either in the mosque or on the way there.

  Seeing this, the girl slipped through a postern door in the wall into the larger flower garden beside the house. Qnce there, she advanced boldly into the path that ran through the village, her little slippers patting the dust diligently until she remembered her new part and endeavored to walk like one of the native women she had watched from the balcony.

  Perhaps the attempt was not altogether successful. Edith's young body had never been obliged to bear such burdens as grain sacks, or her head a water jar. But nearly all the women and children of the valley were in the temple. It was the hour before noon and only a handful of belated men were hurrying along the paths, responsive to the wailing call of the muezzin.

  Edith was going to the mosque. She would see the man Donovan called the hadji and appeal to him to keep her friend from danger. Now that she knew Donovan had aided the Sayaks she felt sure that this priest, whatever his nature, would listen to her.

  The thought of Donovan removed from her and in danger was intolerable to this girl who had never loved before, but who now loved Donovan with an abiding strength that was part of herself.

  Edith skipped along anxious only to be within the temple. Then, as a bent Usbek peasant, withered and toil-worn, glanced at her in some surprise, she moderated her steps to a more sober gait. She did not fear being spoken to. Observation had shown her that the strict privacy of women, a rule among all Mohammedan races, obtained in the valley.

  Iskander's tale had aroused her sympathy. She had come to understand—or thought she had—the harassing life of the mountain dwellers of Centr
al Asia, the raids upon settlements by men of other religious faiths, the counter-raids, the fierce religious zeal which led men to slay each other.

  But she did not know that Yakka Arik had been inviolate from the surges of intertribal warfare, and this because of one thing. Fear. Nor was she aware of the deep spirit of protection for their womenfolk that dwelt in the hearts of the Sayaks.

  Edith, because she did not understand, did not make allowance for the code of these men—an eye for an eye, a blow for a blow, a life for a life.

  Her heart was beating clamorously as she slipped past scattered groups of turbaned, swarthy men who scarcely looked at her, owing to the general reluctance to gaze even upon a veiled woman who belonged to another man.

  So she walked slowly across the dusty space in front of the mosque. The stone arch rose before her. Armed men, standing beside the gigantic trumpets that Donovan had called the "horns of Jericho," looked down at her grimly from the balcony over the entrance. For a second the girl hesitated, feeling the eyes of the guards upon her.

  For the first time she experienced an acute foreboding. Had the watching sentinels who scrutinized each newcomer, fingering their weapons, succeeded in penetrating her disguise?

  Then she heard quick footsteps in the sand, and a tiny figure drew near her, running toward the mosque. A Sayak child, seven or eight years of age, had fallen behind the groups of older worshipers. Realizing that her hesitation was attracting the attention of the watchers, Edith took the hand of the boy and advanced beside him toward the arch. He looked up at her playfully and trotted on manfully, perceiving no difference in this tall woman from other Sayaks—glad, in fact, of the aid of her hand.

  A moment the clear sunlight gleamed on the white embroidery of her headdress; then she passed into the shadow of the arch—and repressed an involuntary cry. Some steps led into the door of the building itself, within the arch, and on the lowest step a hooded Arab was sitting, scimitar across his knee.